


The American Icon

by Magik (magikfanfic)



Series: Future Adventures of Yorkes and Stein - Avenging Verse [1]
Category: Runaways (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 01:42:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/768508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/Magik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers, former Captain America and Nick Fury’s replacement as director of SHIELD, makes Chase an offer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The American Icon

**Author's Note:**

> This is Runaways fic inspired by the idea of Chase becoming Captain America. This is totally an AU in all the ways but enjoy if you want to. No warning necessary. All Marvel characters. I own nada.

Gert feigns innocence and confusion when Colonel Steve Rogers, SHIELD director and former Captain America, knocks on their door. But Chase knows that if anyone on the planet knows what SHIELD is up to, it’s going to be Gert, which is not just because she happens to be the current leader of Avengers but also because she doesn’t like leaving any shadowy military organizations running around loose and unknown. Even if she didn’t work hand in hand with them on a daily basis, she would figure out how to get the information she needs. That’s what she’s all about. In fact, she has her hands in just about everything these days from the X-Men—thanks to Molly—to the goings on of the world’s magical element due to Nico being the Sorceress Supreme following Stephen Strange’s retirement, death, retirement, who can keep it straight anymore. Victor has the newest Fantastic Four under control, and Karo is pretty much the liaison between the rest of the universe and earth when she isn’t traveling with Nico.

And, well, Chase might not be as smart as Tony Stark or even his parents, but he’s a lot more intelligent than he ever wanted to let on in his youth, which is precisely why Gert was so keen to maneuver him into Tony’s line of sight. Even those who do not produce heirs might need one, after all. Gert has managed to orchestrate a decent life for all of them with subtle manipulations here and there. This is just the latest in a long line of them, he’s sure, this business with Steve Rogers showing up at their door.

Yet she plays it cool and doesn’t look at him—if she looks at him the gig will be up, and they both know it—as she tells Steve to sit anywhere and then proceeds to do whatever it was she was doing in the first place. Mercenaries are better hostesses than Gert even if they would never stand a chance against her in combat, which is also something that surprises people because if there was ever someone that no one expected to be deadly it was Gert. She doesn’t kill. She can. With a word or a glance. She knows how, and she can do it. Like always, though, she prefers her words and plans and machinations. That’s just the way she is, and that’s how Chase knows that nothing in his life is ever a coincidence With the exception of him, Gert doesn’t like surprises. 

“We have a proposition for you, Mr. Stein,” Steve says, all official business even when Chase offers him a beer. Of course. Things are all very SHIELD right now, but Chase has hung out with Steve on occasion. Outside of all the work stuff, they get along well. Hell, Gert even manages to see eye to eye with Steve sometimes and not just cram all his nationalistic fervor in his face. Running SHIELD is starting to wear on him more than when he was in the Avengers. Chase can see it, and if Chase can see it then Gert spotted it ten years ago and has been slowly doing something in the background that she may never put into action or has already put into action. Chase doesn’t ask because it’s easier that way.

Chase waits. On the other side of the room, Gert waits as well, a fact that everyone knows and no one acknowledges. He sips his beer and toys with his phone and waits because Steve looks uncomfortable and fidgety and so new to this whole thing despite how long he’s been in the driver’s seat now. It’s strange. It makes him want to call him out on it, tell him to relax and take a breather, that this doesn’t have to be done now. Only it does.

There hasn’t been a Captain America for three years. Despite all of Gert’s campaigning to the contrary, the American public desperately needs and wants one. The last one, some guy that Chase never met but he’s sure Gert knew everything about, died helping Thor put a stop to yet another one of his brother’s plots. It’s nice how gods are always gonna be gods. At the end of the day, America is captainless and something needs to be done about it.

“There have been talks, and we would like for you to take up the mantle of Captain America,” Steve finally says after the silence has probably gotten too thick for him. 

Silence never bothers Chase anymore. He doesn’t feel the need to fill all the spaces with endless yammering these days. When he was a kid, he couldn’t shut up. He couldn’t shut up, and Gert didn’t shut up because she was always correcting him. It made them a nightmare for anyone else to be around, but they were fine. They were better with each other like that, always were, still are even though the need for all the talking isn’t really there now.

“Me?” Chase questions, laughing, drinking beer. “You don’t want me.”

Steve shifts, uncomfortable. Chase wonders how anyone could do that job. He met Nick Fury a number of times, but was never able to figure him out although he loved it when Gert would cow that man. The look on Fury’s face when Gert, newly appointed Avengers leader after much grousing from her, walked up to him and cut his knees out from under him with words and accusations about what SHIELD was up to, which all turned out to be true because Gert, was priceless. Chase managed to sneak a picture on his cell and the image is part of his screensaver. Nick Fury looking like he had just stuck his hand into a viper pit, and Gert looking for all the world as though she were talking about nothing more important than greeting cards or some shit. Chase kicks himself almost every day for not recording it instead.

“I know that this might come as a surprise, but we really think that it would be best. You’d have a handler, of course.”

Chase cuts him off. “Why would I need a handler?” And he can practically feel Gert’s eyes roll from across the room even though she doesn’t say a word. “Who would it be?”

Now Steve looks as though he’s waiting for a black hole to open up under him, and Chase can’t help but smirk as he takes another sip of his beer because he knows what’s coming. “We were thinking that, given her position with the Avengers and the ties that Captain America has with the team, that your wife…”

Ding! Steve has now taken the bait and set himself up to be yet another fly in Gert’s web. Not so long ago that would have been Chase. It never gets old watching someone else get trapped.

“How many times have we been over this, Rogers,” the voice comes out clear and crisp with all the command and self-possession that she uses in the field. It’s the same tone she’s used since she was four, and Chase should know because he’s heard it, learned it down to the slightest nuance through the years. All he does is hum to himself. “I’m no one’s wife. We’re not married and common law doesn’t exist in this state. Even if it did, it wouldn’t matter. At best marriage is antiquated and superficial. At worst it’s stifling and controlling often ending in divorce and a war over material possessions that aren’t worth anything anyway except as pawns.”

Chase whistles. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest anyway? For Gert to be my handler. Considering the sex and everything.” For a minute he thinks that Steve expects Gert to lambaste them both, but she just laughs and continues working on whatever she has over there.

“At present SHIELD does not deem it to be a conflict of interest. Captain America is a part of the Avengers, and Gert is the leader of that unit. Unless you’d rather be placed with the Fantastic Four. The name is easily changeable to Five without losing the alliteration.” 

SHIELD is wearing Steve down. Sometimes he doesn’t even sound like himself. “There’s no way that Victor is going to be my handler.” Chase likes Victor. Well. Chase likes Victor now that it’s been determined that his Gert isn’t going to be murdered by their world’s Victor. These days they get together for beer and football games when Victor’s not busy kicking ass. “Steve, I’m a lab rat. That’s what I do. I meddle with things Tony told me about and try not to blow the world up.”

“He’s joking,” Gert adds.

Chase shakes his head to indicate that no, maybe not so much. It’s gotten close a few times. He’s really, really glad about all the safety protocols in the apartment and in the lab and in, well, every place he works in. That was another thing that Gert insisted on. All of this only works as long as they have each other so it’s paramount that everyone survives. Him, her, Molly, Nico, Vic and Karo. Gert doesn’t care about Xavin, didn’t even really care when Xavin and Karo were trying to make their weird arranged marriage work out, which he doesn’t get because if their parents were going to bring giants to end the world why arrange anything? Were they really gonna stop with Earth? Doesn’t matter. That thing fell apart and Xavin went home, the end. No one cares anymore.

He can almost see it, the moment when Steve goes from being Colonel Rogers of SHIELD to a guy, an everyday, ordinary guy who did what he had to do for his country. There’s almost an audible click when the switch is thrown, and Chase can’t helped but wonder whether that will be him one day. Gert already has a different face and demeanor for everything because she has to, but all of them still maintain a definite sense of who she is. That’s the one thing that she’ll never stop doing, he knows. At the core, Gert is always Gert even when she’s elbow deep in controlling this or that she’s still that girl who believed her parents were evil before there was definitive proof. She’s always the girl who can play the drums just as well as any professional in a rock band but never shows anyone but him. No matter what she does, Gert will never lose sight of Gert.

Steve, though, is slipping away at the edges. Chase doesn’t want that. He likes his simple little life despite the fact that it’s not. His best friend and lover is the leader of the Avengers, his stand in little sister is one of the field leaders of the X-Men, his stand in brother is in charge of the Fantastic Four and his last two basically sisters travel across space while one of them wields magic, and he works on clean, sustainable energy and all the gadgets and gizmos that are needed by all the people he loves. It’s not normal or simple to anyone on the outside, but it’s all he’s known. It’s all he’s ever known since he finally got away from his shitty parents, and it’s his. Steve suddenly wants to introduce something new to to the table, something he doesn’t know what to do with, something that might change everything about his simple life.

“Chase, I know that it seems like a lot to have to handle, and it is,” Steve tells him, and this is how he should have started out in the first place. Chase doesn’t do well with authority or masks or any of that shit. He deals better with people just talking to him. Not at him or down to him. Just talking. Bro to bro as he would have said in the old days.

Steve keeps going, “It’s a lot to handle. There’s a lot you have to do, and it’s a lot to have on your shoulders. It’s a big responsibility. You’re not just you anymore. You become an icon, a symbol. The symbol of America.” 

Chase misses the fact that Gert hasn’t said something snarky about how America is doomed if he’s their symbol, and then he realizes that if Steve is here, Gert did this. Gert would have had her hands in all of this. Someone somewhere along the line would have asked her who was the symbol of America in her eyes, and she would have said him. That reminds him why he loves her so even as it cements, yet again, how much she loves him despite the fact that she says it rarely.

“No one will force you, Chase, but I think America could do a lot worse than to have you as an icon.” There’s the unspoken understanding that someone will force him if she has to, but no one needs to acknowledge that for it to be true. Steve stands as though he knows that pretty soon he’s not going to be comfortable in the same room with the two of them. “Call me when you decide. You can take a little time.” With that he lets himself out because, again, neither of them have ever been much on “proper” manners.

“So,” Chase says, taking another drink of his beer, “you actually think that you can handle me, huh?”

“Shut up, Stein,” she says from across the room. Chase can hear her smiling.


End file.
